Perhaps the question of “am I saved?” is better phrased as “do I love?” - changing our perspective from inward to outward, from self to other. Maybe it’s in giving less thought about our “personal salvation” and in giving more of ourselves to others that we move closer to Christ?

This thread reminds me of an essay I read recently on a home-church-oriented blog. The writer (whom I’m not familiar with) offered a laundry list on the ways in which the western church is (in his words) “deceiving itself in crucial areas,” including the practices of “asking Jesus into one’s heart” / “saying a sinners prayer” / “giving one’s heart to the Lord” – none of which are specifically mentioned in the NT.

Some of his premises are questionable, but certainly we are living in a Xn era that has created a mechanistic form of salvation which relies on quick, convenient, patternistic formulae, rather than organic, abiding trust in the Spirit to work its own “divine heuristic” into a pre-Xn life.